Tricks for Cooking Frozen Salmon

Greetings from Southeast Alaska. I'm here fishing and touring in the Tongass National Forest with Hal Herring and others. You'll be hearing more from Hal on all of that shortly. I want to talk about one of my favorite reasons to love Alaska's wild salmon.

There is nothing quite like the flavor of a wild-caught salmon. Today we visited the Alaska Glacier Seafood Company to watch some sockeyes get processed, and we also spoke with some commercial fishermen (trollers) who are having an epic season to date.

The salmon here are often caught one at a time by the trollers, force bled by pumping water through them, immediately put in cold storage, processed within a matter of hours, then flash frozen for shipment to the Lower 48. You cannot get it any fresher unless you eat it where it was caught.

Thing is, I have always had trouble with thawing and then cooking frozen salmon. I often goof it up. But there's a great resource that will help you get the best flavors from your freshly frozen seafood: the Cook it Frozen website and app features all sorts of ingenious recipes and techniques. No thawing. No messing around. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Off to fly out on an otter for a salmony bake on the beach… more to come.